The weekend played host to a couple of tough training sessions with the EMTF. SBN Kumar Jr traveled down with a few students from his school in tow and stayed down to take the first squad session for the World Championships next year in Florida. Between you and me this meant I knew what I was going to be taking away from the weekend – pain.
The couple of hours we had on Friday evening were pretty hard work (oddly I can’t remember anything from the lesson), but Saturday afternoon was the killer. From a CV point of view it was very tough, and we had a good test of both our aerobic and anaerobic fitness, not to mention a lot of strength and stamina work. I can’t remember doing as many sit-ups in one go before, and I hope it’s a long time before I have to do it again. The added palm strikes to the solar plexus during the exercises were the icing on the cake!
If that cake were made of glass, elephant tramplings and caustic soda that is, the entire front of my body is killing me!
I wasn’t too bad on Sunday to be honest, a bit sore but nothing to write home about, but after last night’s lesson which included more core work drills from the previous days, I went to bed in a lot of pain. I’ve had DOMS before, but nothing like this, it feels like I must’ve had a bloody hernia or something!
Of course, we training martial artists are the epitome of grace and always in control of our bodies and balance (no, really), which makes this morning’s performance of ‘How To Get Out Of Bed Like Bruce Lee’ even more atrocious… I slept reasonably well considering, only waking up a few times when I rolled over and when the dog decided he wanted a night-time jaunt around the garden to relieve himself. When the alarm went off though, I found I couldn’t actually sit up.
No matter how hard I tried I could not lift myself off the bed, and lay there for a few minutes wondering if this is what it’s going to be like when I’m eighty. Then, using my wonderfully logical brain and my love of applied physics, I came up with a plan:
- Lift knees
- Drop knees to side to rotate body
- Drop legs off side of bed to rotate into seated position
- Stand up and face the day knowing I AM MAN
What happened though was something quite different. The bed had been shifted about 6-8 inches to my side of the room to accommodate the dog’s bed on the other side (so he doesn’t go off to make friends with the cats in the middle of the night and end up with a face full of claws), and as I hitched my knees up and rolled onto my side two things happened. 1) I fell off the bed. 2) I got wedged between the wall and the bed. I was barely conscious at this point, and the confusion of finding myself suspended above the floor in total darkness left me a bit bemused, but I figured it out eventually. I just couldn’t figure out how to get down. I couldn’t struggle or twist to get myself unstuck because it hurt so much, and I remember a tremendous sense of shame at having got myself stuck. Kinda like a ship in a bottle – how did it get there??
Eventually I wriggled myself free and slumped to the floor, unobserved and pride intact! I’m still not sure how it happened really, it was one of those only-just-awake things where you’re not sure if it really happened or not. Suffice to say, I’m installing some kind of airplane-style escape chute at the nearest opportunity.
Fail?
haha yes, MASSIVELY EPIC FAIL!!! 😀